Larry Dahlke and I recorded this for The Missouri Review‘s Audio Contest. He plays the interviewer. I play actor Jack Renner, star of one of the worst movies of the 1960s, who tells the story of why a young, black actor couldn’t come to the premiere of a movie they’d done together. I think it turned out all right, so I thought I’d share. Enjoy

So we did this with Dismantle the Sun because it was my birthday. Now we’re doing it with Summer of Long Knives because…well…actually it’s part of a larger promotion by my publisher.

Anyway, you can get the book free on your kindle until November 14th. Or you could always buy the paperback from Amazon or your book dealer of choice (even if they don’t have it in stock, it’s easily orderable) if you prefer paper books and paying me. (I prefer paper books and paying me, just for the record.)

Overall, I quite enjoyed Jim Snowden’s The Summer of Long Knives. There is nothing light about this mystery thriller. It is very dark, and well it should be given the time period and place in our history. I was swept up in Rolf’s life and investigation, anxious to see justice brought to the killer, while at the same time sad knowing the fate of the country, of the war to come and the many more injustices that would occur in the meantime.

This blog tour’s been a pleasure. These bloggers push and contrive to build an audience for new work. It’s a thankless job that seldom pays (a situation I’m in touch with). I salute them for their labor, even those who considered my book to be labor, and I hope to hear from them again the next time I have a book out.

For those coming to this whole blog tour for the first time, here’s the list of all the participants:

Actually, the interview I did with Omnimysterynews is better than a conversation with me. I don’t digress as much.

You know, come to think of it, I was thinking about my penchant for digression the other day. I was on my way to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk because we were low on it. It had been raining really hard, but I figured I could make it during a break in the downpour. This was important because I need to install the new windshield wipers I bought on sale at Costco, but the old ones are really stubborn and hard to remove, so I haven’t gotten around to finishing that job yet and I don’t want to face heavy rain with that still an issue. You know how it is. Anyway, I was driving up the 100th street, approaching the badly designed Bellevue Square parking garage–you never want to try to park there after Thanksgiving, let me tell you…

My publisher, Booktrope, has put the ebook versions of Summer of Long Knives on sale this week for 99 cents. My reviewers have taken to calling me a “magician with words” lately, and this is a cheap and easy chance to find out why. Just follow the links below:

I didn’t get into grad school in 2000 as I’d hoped. When I asked one of my former professors, who was on the admissions committee, why his program had rejected me, he said that while he lobbied for the me on the basis of the piece I sent, other members of the committee felt that my sample, though strong of voice, lacked dramatic incidents.* So for my 2001 application, I wrote “Units of Blood”, which speeds a bullet through a character’s brains out on the second page. Yeah, admissions committee, I thought, I gotcher drama right here.

One thick envelope later and the message was clear: people like my work better when I ruthlessly bump off my characters for their amusement. Live and learn.

Harlan Ellison fans will note that the format of “Units of Blood” is similar to that of his classic, “The Deathbird”. Thematically, the stories are quite different, as you’ll see; but sure, I’d long wanted to do an homage to Ellison, whose work taught me what was possible in fiction. In 2001, the time seemed ripe.

“Units of Blood” originally appeared in The Seattle Review (vol 25. no 2. 1993). I think they’d want that known.